NOW HEAR THIS: Plants and Animals wild about wildlife

Montreal trio Plants and Animals has been lying low recently, but with two-thirds of its members hailing from Nova Scotia, the band felt it was time to take a break from its adopted city and spend some time on the East Coast.

Haligonians Warren Spicer and Matthew Woodley, and Quebec compatriot Nicolas Basque, have a handful of Maritime shows this week, their first in months after spending the fall and winter hunkered down to work on a fourth full-length release.

According to Woodley, this followup to 2012’s gritty live-off-the-floor project The End of That will be more groove-based and employ more of the studio wizardry of Parc Avenue and La La Land.

“We’re kind of staying under the radar,” he says. “We got invited to play Paddlefest in St. Andrews, N.B., on Saturday and thought that since we were coming out this way, it was high time that we played at home.”

Plants and Animals appears Thursday night at the Old Confidence Lodge in Riverport — between Lunenburg and Bridgewater — with Paper Beat Scissors (in seven-piece ensemble mode), and on Friday at the Seahorse Tavern with North Lakes.

The group is fond of both venues, making their last Seahorse appearance during the 2012 Halifax Pop Explosion, although Thursday night’s Riverport show is the first time they have performed there.

“Warren worked on an album at Old Confidence Lodge last summer, just doing some mixing (for a new record from Montreal alt-folk singer Katie Moore), so we thought we’d add that to the week as well,” says Woodley. “It’s such a beautiful place.

“I first heard about it from people in Montreal, actually. For people to come that far to record, it’s gotta be something special; the combination of the location on the South Shore and the place itself, and Diego (Medina), who runs it, make for a magic triumvirate of forces.”

This week’s shows will be Plants and Animals’ first since November, when the band played an Ottawa masquerade benefit for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s 50th anniversary.

The show tied in to a series of videos that Spicer and Woodley produced for the society, and are hosted online at plantsandanimals.ca, to raise awareness of Canadian endangered species.

The clips are cute in their execution, but chilling in their message when you realize how close we are to losing species such as the prairie sage grouse and the North Atlantic right whale.

“I come from an extended family of environmentalists and conservation biologists, and my aunt works for CPAWS, and her husband is a pretty busy conservationist, so these topics have been coming up in conversation around the family Thanksgiving dinner table for years,” says Woodley.

“I was cross-country skiing in Gatineau Park with my aunt and uncle one day when the subject of CPAWS’ anniversary came up, and we thought it would be fun to do something together. We’re a band, we can reach people, and it felt good reaching people for something that means something to all of us. It’s the first time that we’ve done anything that political, and it’d be nice to do more of that stuff.”

The 40-second videos, produced for the society’s Week of the Wild, show Spicer drawing the animals in stop-motion photography while the young son of the band’s manager provides the narration.

The music is an upbeat Plants and Animals piece that contrasts with the videos’ sober message. It also doesn’t hurt that the band’s name coincides with the subject matter, although it wasn’t meant to be an earnest environmental statement when the trio picked it.

“It just came up, playfully and naively,” says Woodley, now in his 10th year with the group. “Maybe even ironically. But climate change is the biggest problem facing humanity. We should be doing something about it, and raising awareness about lands and animals that need to be protected is a good thing.”

Tickets for Plants and Animals and Paper Beat Scissors at Old Confidence Lodge in Riverport Thursday night will be available at the door. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets for the Seahorse show Friday are $19.99 in advance, via sonicconcerts.com, or $23.99 at the door. Showtime is 10 p.m.

Also at the Seahorse this weekend, things get heavy at the Maritime Tattoo Festival After Party on Saturday night, with the welcome returns of Iron Giant, Broken Ohms and Big Game Hunt to the basement stage. Sounds like the perfect combination for sweaty sounds and freshly inked skin.